Use Case: Prototyping Medical Microsystems

In the area of cardiac rhythm management, devices such as artificial pacemakers can profit from optimized control strategies, reduced power consumption, and improved reliability. An intelligent blood flow sensor helps improve the measurement and control of the blood flow through the heart, preserve the remaining battery life, and detect defective lead wires. With rapid control prototyping, the functionality and performance of existing medical microsystems, such as ultra-small monitoring devices and therapy aids as well as intelligent implants can be enhanced and improved. Rapid control prototyping has been successfully used even in laboratory tests with live probands to adjust and control their heart rates, both under anesthesia and awake.

Developing and Testing Medical Devices

Safety and reliability play a crucial role in the development of medical devices. New functions must have an optimal design and undergo extensive testing. In many cases, capturing and preprocessing signals is an integral part of function development. With MicroLabBox, you can outsource extensive and computation-intensive signal preprocessing tasks, such as filtering or signal analysis, to an integrated FPGA. Connecting BNC cables directly to MicroLabBox for processing analog signals minimizes the influence of external interferences on the signal and makes it possible to achieve a high signal quality. During or after the development of the medical device, MicroLabBox can also be used as a testing system. With it, you can reproducibly simulate many different environment conditions, e.g., based on test algorithms or existing measurement data. This increases the medical device's maturity, saves time, reduces costs, and minimizes the risks compared to tests on a living organism.